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Happy New Year everyone! Lotta crazy BF stuff to post & catch up on here at the Forum, and will try to start posting again soon.

Coexistence and avoidance are not mutually exclusive. You split that into 3 separate categories which wasn't necessary. It's just different ways of saying the same thing. I would guess the problem is your idea of what close proximity is. From personal experience elk and deer actively avoid each other though they utilize the same habitat and food sources. It's more like an out of sight out of mind type of avoidance. Something else, at least in the PNW, most of the time in forest situations it's just as hard to find evidence of bears in an area as it would be to find bigfoot evidence. The difference being that bears aren't as active at avoiding humans. Bear scat is the most likely evidence you'll find. My thoughts are there is actually more overlap in the A' states than is being allowed for. Black bears utilize the same general habitat wherever they are found in North America. They like forests. Thick, thin, young, old, wet or drier, deciduous or conifer. They utilize available cover. Sounds kind of like bigfoot.

I agree that each individual, human or BF has routine behaviors. But that does not mean those behaviors are universal and can be applied to every member of any species. We see a lot of bigfoot researchers making that mistake. Those that have a public podium, seem to speak in absolutes about BF behavior. I guess it is because they feel obligated to wear the hat of expert. Some of those absolutes I strongly dispute. BF is primarily nocturnal is one of them. I think BF nocturnal behavior is conditional based on human presence. That is not a guess but something I have observed. .Even that may vary from individual BF to BF or region to region. An elderly BF may have cataracts and be virtually blind at night. Older people I know avoid driving at night for the same reason. BF demeanor seems to vary by region. Some places they are shy and reclusive. Other places they seem to enjoy chasing people out of the woods. It might not make sense but that behavior is the kind that has the most promise to have contact and get video. At least you know they are around when they are trying to chase you away.

A side note to consider ... if you are hearing claps instead of wood knocks and especially if you are hearing tongue pops instead of rock clacks, the bigfoot making them may be a whole lot closer to you than you imagine. Y' know ... something to ponder while laying there in your tent. MIB

Fabrication, hoaxing, and storytelling are not new things. In fact, they seem to have been a popular form of entertainment in the 19th and early 20th century (if not always) particularly when it comes to topics outside of the ordinary - like giants, sea serpents, lake monsters, ghosts, and wildmen. If I had a conspiratorial mindset and a penchant for taking dubious accounts literally then I'm sure I would see things the same way as you... Perception is key. You question every source (which is admirable) except the ones which are telling you what you want to hear. You also fail to question the most important source - yourself... i.e. how you perceive things... Everyone can and does get things wrong. Everyone but you and those that are telling you what you want to hear, apparently... An orangutang... Perhaps the problem is that many are too quick to go to the cryptid bin for answers...

I was curious about how the distribution of BFRO reports normalized by population density will change if we look at the data by county instead of by state. Averaging data can sometimes lead to flaws in interpretation (like the statistician who drowned in a river with an average depth of 3 ft). Thus, I wanted to check if population density (when aggregated for the full state) was skewing the data. I decided to explore the data looking at only two states (Washington and Florida). I selected those because WA was in group A and FL was in group B (of Mendoza’s paper); and I wanted to explore very different states. All BFRO cases by county came from the BFRO website. Population data by county came from 2010 census. Land area in square mile came from state government statistics. The first graph below shows the cumulative distribution of BFRO reports (normalized per county population density) for the 39 counties in Washington. The average from the counties (0.63) is much lower than the state average (6.08). The chart shows that the distribution is skewed by a few counties with high number of normalized BFRO reports. Attached is a Washington County map so that folks can see where Skamania and Okanogan counties are located (2 of the outliers). The second graph shows the cumulative distribution of BFRO reports (normalized per county population density) for the 67 counties in Florida. The average from the counties (0.03) is again much lower than the state average (0.88). The chart shows that the distribution is skewed by a few counties with high number of normalized BFRO reports. The Florida state average is a mathematical artifact and is not even within the scale of the counties distribution. Attached is a Florida County map so that folks can see where Liberty and Levy counties are located (2 of the outliers). The summary table compares the statistics of WA to FL and calculates the ratio of the averages. The county average was also calculated using population weighted average and land area weighed average basis instead of simple averaging of all counties. Just as Mendoza had calculated beforehand using state average statistics, WA has a much higher number of BFRO reports (normalized by population density) than Florida. The state average data showed a ratio of 7 to 1. If we use the county average we get a ratio of 18. Thus, WA indeed has more reports per population density than FL by a large number. In doing this work, I realized that there are some issues/problems with the data that might impede drawing hard conclusions when comparing data from different states. Some of these issues are: Number of BFRO reports for each state has different time horizons. Some data collection started early in some states (60’s) and late in others. Maybe reports should be included in the analysis for a limited but consistent time period (for example 30 years)? The amount of effort and staff to collect/investigate reports in FL might be different than in WA at different time periods. Thus, the WA and FL databases might not be representative samples. If BF is a real creature and lives it both WA and FL, its population density might be totally different in FL than in WA because of different habitat/climate/food sources. Thus, number of BFRO reports per human population density could be lower in FL than in WA because the density of BF population is much lower than in FL. Human population changes over time while the BFRO reports can go back to the 60’s in some states. I am not sure if this dynamic affects much the statistical inferences. For example, I took human population data from 2010 census but some WA BFRO reports include data from the 60’s.

Here's mine. 2006 TJ Unlimited.

I feel sad that our failure to gather evidence of an extant BF species has come to this. We are witnessing the death of BF in the realm of plausibility. A negative result from 50 years of effort by thousands to substantiate the BF hypothesis, is a result, we should face it head on.